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Gil Gomez reached for the stars and aimed for the sky. While growing up in El Paso, Texas, just four hours away from where his parents were raised in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, the managing director at Deloitte dreamed of becoming a pilot in the US Air Force. Whether or not his primos across the border teased him for that has yet to be confirmed.
However, he learned the value of hard work at their abuela’s ranch just like they did. And he had a knack for school. When he found out that he couldn’t join the US Air Force as a pilot because he wore glasses, he turned to his golden ticket of a plan B: a full academic scholarship to the University of Notre Dame.
“The first time I was ever on an airplane was when I left for college at eighteen by myself,” Gomez says. “My parents really couldn’t afford to drop me off a thousand miles away across the country.”
“I’m not a technologist, but I leverage technology to solve business problems.”
Gil Gomez
With his family shaping his work ethic and emphasizing the importance of education, Gomez used his scholarship to study finance at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. After he graduated, he worked at Baxter Healthcare for five years before he found his niche as a consultant with SAP.
Then he lent his SAP experience to several management consulting firms and well-known brands over the next two decades. He now holds the title of managing director and SAP analytics leader at Deloitte Consulting.
“I think maybe when I changed careers, I really took my business experience and coupled it with my affinity for technology,” Gomez says. “I’m not a technologist, but I leverage technology to solve business problems.”
As a go-to specialist for Deloitte on SAP, Gomez oversees a diverse portfolio of clients and advises them on projects that expand their access to data and analytics tools.
Whether he’s advising a small start-up as it scales up its data infrastructure or navigating a Fortune 500 company through the chaos of digital transformation, he provides expert help at each stage of their journey. Plus, he represents Deloitte in its strategic alliance relationships with SAP, Google Cloud, and other technology providers within the SAP ecosystem.
“Consulting is very diverse by nature. I believe it’s a perfect job for somebody with a diverse background because there is no specific prototype or profile for a consultant.”
Gil Gomez
Despite being far removed from the summers he worked on his abuela’s ranch, Gomez goes above and beyond to put his people in positions to succeed. Ever since Deloitte appointed him as an executive sponsor for Hispanic and Latinx recruiting, he has taken steps to address the lack of diverse representation in the industry, where just 8.3 percent of management consultants are Hispanic or Latino. When he speaks at Deloitte networking events dedicated to Hispanic and Latino professionals, he reminds guests why they belong in the industry.
“Consulting is very diverse by nature,” Gomez says. “I believe it’s a perfect job for somebody with a diverse background because there is no specific prototype or profile for a consultant.”
Gomez also believes raising awareness of what management consultants do will be key to boosting the community’s representation in the sector.
“People go to college to be a doctor or lawyer. No one says they want to be a consultant, and this is necessary,” Gomez says.
Even if the managing director takes pride in carving out a path to success for his SAP clients and aspiring coworkers, no amount of career accomplishments will replace his most painful loss. His father died in 2019. Yet Gomez still wishes he could appreciate the legacy heleft behind for his kids.
“Growing up in El Paso, Texas in the late eighties, where the high school dropout rate was still very high, he and my mom raised three kids, and we all have advanced degrees,” Gomez says. “I’ve got an MBA. My sister has an MBA. My brother has an MFA, and he’s now getting his MBA as well. I don’t think my parents ever realized how proud they should have been about that.”
